Mana Conversion

A Novice adventurer's day began early—at the guild, checking whether any work had come in.

I would have liked to squeeze in among the other adventurers and look over the newly posted requests on the board—but my jobs weren't up there. The guild's request board only listed work available to Bronze Rank adventurers and above.

So where did a Novice-rank adventurer like me pick up work? You had to watch for a gap when the receptionist wasn't attending to a proper-rank adventurer, then ask—quickly.

"Hmm—today there's a job catching rats in the grain warehouse. The pay is one silver per head."

Tina was busy with other adventurers, so I'd been directed to a different receptionist. Meruru was nowhere to be seen at the counter; she was still in the middle of receptionist training.

Rat catching, huh...

"Are those just regular rats? Not rat monsters or anything?"

"Yes. Just ordinary mice."

"Anything else?"

"There's dock cleaning as well. Ah, and loading merchant wagons, plus pest control."

This is basically a day-labor temp agency.

Well, it couldn't be helped. Novice rank was, in practice, a provisional grade handed out to people whose abilities as adventurers hadn't been verified yet.

Pushing aside the Narration's snide remarks—which I'd grown thoroughly used to by now—I took a few odd jobs and left the guild.

Thinking about it, the guild ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠arranging this kind of menial work for Novice adventurers was a form of welfare. It was designed so that, until you earned Bronze Rank, guild jobs alone would be enough to keep you barely alive.

Of course, the money from this sort of work meant nothing beyond subsistence. Rat-catching paid a single silver per head; you'd have to bag thirty of them just to maybe cover a night at the inn. The system ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had never been built to make anyone rich, so I took only as much work as I could finish between early morning and late lunch.

If I threw myself into odd jobs all morning without a moment to breathe, I could scrape together just enough to survive another day. Compared to when I'd gone herb-gathering with Meruru, my life had plummeted into a hand-to-mouth existence.

But aside from the inability to save a single coin, there were clear advantages. First: going in and out of the guild every day meant I was getting familiar with how the system worked. Second: I could pick up all kinds of information by eavesdropping on other adventurers' conversations. And ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠most importantly, third: I could use those empty afternoon hours for personal training.

Cramming work into the morning and then drilling with a sword all afternoon was hardly easy. But nothing changes if you don't put in the effort. I had no status window to raise my stats, no invincible cheat ability—just the Narration that occasionally piped up in my head to deliver a painful barb. Which meant the only thing I could do was work.

"Hah! Hah!"

With each shout, the sword cleaved the same empty air again and again. Thick beads of sweat traced paths down my forehead and cheeks. The wrist gripping the hilt had gone numb, and my palms were raw and stinging.

This was the forest where Meruru and I had so often gone to gather medicinal herbs. Every afternoon, I came here alone to swing my sword.

"Haa... haa..."

The Narration drove the point home as I stood there, exhausted from hours of swinging. I already knew. Without a sword instructor—without even a training manual—just waving a blade around would never become swordsmanship.

But this was all I could do right now. It was a matter of basic stamina. Swinging a sword demanded far more endurance than I'd ever imagined. I'd picked one at the weapons shop that fit my hand well and had a reasonable weight, but lacking strength and stamina, I couldn't handle it properly.

I'd looked around for ways to learn swordsmanship without spending a fortune. With my current income, though, even getting through each day was a struggle—paying someone to teach me simply wasn't an option. So I'd chosen to just keep swinging for as long as I could, building up my stamina. Better to do something than skip training entirely just because I had no one to teach me and no way to learn. At least until I could study proper swordsmanship, I intended to train like this.

And so, without missing a single day, I swung my sword from afternoon until night. At first, a few cuts would leave me spent, the blade feeling as heavy as lead. At night, the muscle pain was so severe I couldn't sleep. But the next morning I'd rise at dawn without fail, pick up odd jobs at the guild, finish them, and train in the afternoon. As the days passed, the time I could swing without rest gradually stretched longer.

Even I knew it was an inefficient, brutish method. Still, I figured building the stamina to actually handle a sword was what mattered. Worried that I might pick up bad habits that would later interfere with learning the real thing, I locked my form into a single motion: the most fundamental technique in kendo, the downward front cut. I'd learned a little kendo as a child, so I did my best to dredge up those memories and repeated that one movement. Eyes forward. Raise the sword high overhead. Bring it down with everything I had. And again. And again.

Honestly, with a sword in my hand, I sometimes wanted to try imitating all those flashy techniques I'd seen in manga. But I was afraid that giving in to the temptation would instill bad physical habits. I'd heard that when you learn a sport, strange habits that settle into the body take several times longer to unlearn.

Right now, I was a blank sheet of paper with nothing drawn on it. The trouble was, the sheet itself was too small—palm-sized, with no room to paint the picture of swordsmanship even if I wanted to. So I decided to build my foundation first, to stretch that blank page until there was space enough to draw. And if I could help it, I didn't want to scribble anything useless onto that newly won space.

Those were the days I spent swinging a sword alone in the forest. Then I saw a familiar young man walking out from deeper among the trees. It was Oren—the adventurer who had pulled Meruru and me out of that slime hell.

"Oh? Yunoa. What are you doing out here?"

Oren approached as I sat on a tree stump, soaked in sweat, catching my breath.

"Sword training. Though it's embarrassing to even call it swordsmanship yet..."

"Ah—come to think of it, I heard you registered as an adventurer recently."

Oren was a Bronze Rank adventurer, on his way back from finishing a request. I decided I should seize this chance encounter as an opportunity.

If this had been before I came to this other world, I might have sneered—Bronze Rank? That's bottom-tier trash. Until you experience it yourself, you can't grasp how hard it is, whether the label is F-rank or Bronze or anything else. It's the same principle as someone who's never held a job thinking an assistant manager title is nothing special, then actually joining a company and discovering that even making assistant manager is harder than they imagined. Not that I'd ever worked at a company myself.

Anyway, to me now, even a Bronze Rank adventurer was a thoroughly impressive one. I'd watched Oren fight slimes with my own eyes, and I genuinely admired him. There was definitely something I could learn from this man.

"Um, if you have a moment..."

I stopped Oren as he was about to exchange a brief greeting and head back to Kubel.

"Would you mind taking a look at my swordsmanship?"

"Hah!"

In front of Oren, I demonstrated the downward front cut I'd repeated more times than I could count. Honestly, I wasn't expecting a good evaluation. I just hoped he might offer even a little advice.

"Have you been swinging like this every day?"

"Well, yes. This is about all I can do."

"You just swung the sword? Without even Mana Conversion?"

Oren asked it back at me. Mana? I had no idea what he was talking about. I was swinging a sword, and suddenly he was bringing up mana?

"Mana?"

"Surely you know about it?"

"I don't, actually."

"Wow..."

Oren's eyes went wide with surprise. Mana? How would I know about something like that? Was that really so shocking? As I was thinking it, Oren explained.

"Mana Conversion. It means gathering the mana that flows through this world into your body and using it to enhance your physical functions."

"That's possible?"

"It should be common knowledge for anyone who aspires to be an adventurer."

Just like that, I had become a man without even common sense. Nobody had told me any of this.

"How do you gather this mana, exactly?"

"Well..."

And Oren began to explain, in careful detail, the adventurer's common knowledge known as Mana Conversion.